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The saga of Housing.com, once a red-hot tech startup in India, has reached a conclusion of sorts after the company was sold to rival PropTiger in a deal announced this week.

Housing.com was once heralded as a trailblazer for its efforts to digitize the sale and rental of property in India. But a fall from grace, which included the ejection of its outspoken CEO and the removal of its rental business in favor of the more lucrative home sales market, has resulted in this fairly underwhelming merger.

The joint entity, which is being labeled “India’s largest online real estate services company,” will get a financial boost, to push on. Australia’s REA Group will put $50 million into its coffers, with SoftBank — which led a $90 million investment in Housing.com two years ago — providing an additional $5 million.

A source close to the companies told TechCrunch that the deal values Housing.com at around $75 million, that’s the same price that SoftBank used for its latest $5 million bridge round for the company in November.

Going forward, Housing.com Jason Kothari will move on to pastures new with PropTiger co-founder and CEO Dhruv Agarwala taking the reins of the joint company. Kothari stepped in to head Housing.com in 2015 after the firing of former CEO Rahul Yadav, the company’s maverick co-founder who upset his board an pledged to give away his shares among other things. Yadav, an open critic of SoftBank and other investors, told Quartz he believes that the company will be shuttered soon following this deal.

“All the excellent talent that it had has already left and those who remained are looking for better opportunities. Traffic has already eroded and, soon, brand Housing.com will die,” he said, adding that he never considered PropTiger a rival in the past.

January is less than two-weeks old, but already it has brought plenty of drama to India’s startup space. More to come in the next eleven and a half months, no doubt.

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin

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Crunchbase

OverviewHousing.com is an Indian online real estate listing portal that simplifies finding, renting, and selling homes in India.
It is capable of providing 3D models for every single new project and in delivering 360 degree views for every piece of land listed with Housing.com.
Housing.com was launched in 2012 and is headquartered in Mumbai.

OverviewHeadquartered in the National Capital Region of Delhi (NCR), PropTiger has been founded by alumni of Harvard Business School, IIT and ISB who possess decades of combined experience in real estate in India as well as abroad.
PropTiger has a team of real estate experts spread across 8 cities in India, namely Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Ahmedabad. Each of our staff …